books.google.com - The city has eight million stories, and this one unfolds just south of 14th Street in Manhattan, mostly on the seven blocks of Fourth Avenue bracketed by Union Square and Astor Place. There, for nearly eight decades, from the 1890s to the 1960s, thrived the New York Booksellers' Row, or, more commonly,...http://books.google.com/books/about/Book_Row.html?id=Gx_Sd5hBwmgC&utm_source=gb-gplus-shareBook Row

Book Row: An Anecdotal and Pictorial History of the Antiquarian Book Trade

The city has eight million stories, and this one unfolds just south of 14th Street in Manhattan, mostly on the seven blocks of Fourth Avenue bracketed by Union Square and Astor Place. There, for nearly eight decades, from the 1890s to the 1960s, thrived the New York Booksellers' Row, or, more commonly, Book Row. This illustrated memoir features historical photographs and is richly anecdotal, and as American as the rags-to-riches tale of the Strand, which began its life as a book stall on Eighth Street and today houses 2.5 million volumes in twelve miles of space. A story cast with colorful characters: like the book dealer George D. Smith; the irascible Russian-born book hunter Peter Stammer, the visionary Theodore C. Schulte; Lou Cohen, founder of the still-surviving Argosy Book Store; gentleman bookseller George Rubinowitz and his legendarily shrewish wife, Jenny, Book Row remembers names and places that all lovers, readers, buyers, sellers, and collectors of books should never forget. Rising rents, street crime, urban redevelopment, television are many of the reasons for the demise of Book Row, but in this volume, based on interviews with dozens of the people who bought, sold, and collected there, it lives again.

LibraryThing Review

User Review - delphica - LibraryThing

(#48 in the 2007 book challenge) This is a great read for people who are overly into books. It is page after page of descriptions of bookstores formerly located in New York City's 4th Avenue book ... Read full review

LibraryThing Review

User Review - Aetatis - LibraryThing

Good book for those of us that enjoy reading about the "good ole days" when booksellers sold new, used and rare books. Excellent for the collecting "books about books" person.Read full review

About the author (2004)

MARVIN MONDLIN began working in the book trade in 1951 and has been the estate book buyer for the Strand since 1974. He is a member of the Antiquarian Booksellers Association of New York and numerous other book-related organizations.

ROY MEADOR, a book collector and freelance writer, has been published in such national periodicals as the New York Times, Chicago Tribune, Smithsonian, and Analog.

Bibliographic information

Title

Book Row: An Anecdotal and Pictorial History of the Antiquarian Book Trade